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The number 40 has great significance in the Bible.

Perhaps best known is the 40 years that the Israelites were condemned to wander in the desert before being permitted entry into the Promised Land. Maybe this mystical quantity will bear significance as we note, this month, the fortieth year since the Roe v Wade decision legalized abortion in America.

Forty years we have lived with the silent, and sometimes not so silent, holocaust in our midst as the lives of 55 million innocent and unborn children have been killed, plucked from their journey to enter this world.

Who were they? Who would they have become?

The unmarried graduate student who gave birth to hi-tech impresario and co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, may well have aborted this child had her pregnancy occurred in 1973 rather than 1955.

This past week former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, recovering victim of a crazed gunman, visited, along with her husband Mark Kelly, Newtown, Connecticut, site of the latest horrible shooting incident.

In their public remarks, they expressed concern that our society has become "desensitized to acts of violence." Appropriate words, I think, that certainly should be considered in the broadest possible sense in our effort to grasp our willingness to tolerate, even nurture, the open and flourishing presence of evil in our society. It takes a deadening of the soul to permit this, a state of being "desensitized."

We know it because when those senses are awakened, our indifference and willingness to tolerate evil is pushed back.

When William Wilberforce fought to abolish the slave trade in England, he moved a boatload of the elite into proximity of a slave ship to smell the stench. Their senses were awakened and a major step forward was achieved to end the horror.

Reformed slave trader John Newton composed "Amazing Grace," with the unforgettable line "Was blind but now I see." If there is good news, it is that, slowly, America seems to be coming to its senses regarding destruction of unborn children.

This week's Time Magazine cover story announces "40 years ago abortion-rights activists won an epic victory with Roe v Wade: They've been losing ever since."

But in noting that ultrasound technology has reduced the willingness of Americans to tolerate abortion, author of the story Kate Pickert misses the key point when she writes, "Thanks to prenatal ultrasound, Americans now understand what a fetus look like and that babies born as early as 24 weeks can now survive."

The key point is that the graphic ultrasound picture, showing the growing and moving fetus, has raised awareness that this unborn child is alive and that abortion is murder.

Ultrasound is sensitizing a desensitized American public that has been willing to tolerate this horror over these forty years. Wars are not won overnight. Victory is achieved battle by battle.

Wilberforce did not stop slavery, but he stopped the slave trade.

Lincoln's first aspiration was not total abolition of slavery in America, but making it illegal in new entrants to the Union.

One battle before us now, as the American soul awakens to the evil of abortion, is to end the expropriation of US taxpayer funds, which now provide almost half the budget of the nation's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

According to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn), Planned Parenthood's latest annual report shows receipt of $542 million from US taxpayers. This is outrageous, particularly when every other day we witness a new confrontation in Washington to find ways to cut our trillion-dollar budget deficit. Rep. Blackburn has introduced legislation to end this funding to large abortion providers. Every American should support this and help win this battle.

And we must continue to work to win the war and awaken the American soul, so that forty years after Roe v Wade we bring an end to the scourge of legal abortion in America.

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Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

Previously:

•01/07/13 D.C. is de-tached . . . from reality
•12/31/12 Blacks are NRA's natural constituency
•12/24/12The lesson of Newtown isn't guns. It's that there are social truths as well as individual truths
•12/17/12 We must fight to restore America
•12/07/12 Wonderful, innovative, compassionate --- and irresponsibly wrong
•12/03/12 The Republican Hispanic challenge
•11/26/12 A society in decline: Our definition of marriage should follow process, not principle?
•11/19/12 Leadership is about identifying the truth, believing it and telling it in a way that people can grasp
•11/11/12 How conservatives can win over blacks and Latinos
•11/05/12 Racial divide has worsened under Obama
•10/29/12 How trillions are poured down a black hole
•10/21/12 Missouri Senate race model for the nation
•10/15/12 On the road to 'death panels'
•10/08/12 Why the Obama bubble still hasn't burst
•10/01/12 To promote freedom abroad, practice it here
•09/24/12 A time for truth, not word games
•08/20/12 America ready for Paul Ryan's adult conversation
•08/13/12 Our economic crisis is a values crisis
•08/06/12 Black pastors press Democrats on gay marriage
•07/30/12 Is Christianity now un-American?
•07/23/12 Entrepreneurs, not politicians, build the nation's prosperity
•07/16/12 The new American food stamp plantation
•07/09/12 In search of conservative leadership
•07/02/12 Light v. darkness in racial politics
•06/25/12 Republicans missing chance on education
•06/11/12: Raise levels of personal responsibility, not the minimum wage
•06/11/12: Free societies soon won't be free if its citizens see freedom as something that should be of responsibility
•06/04/12: Americans have become decidedly more pro-life
•05/28/12: Booker's comments about Bain, capitalism should not surprise
•05/21/12: Obama forcing blacks to make hard choices
•05/14/12: Fairness? The struggle in our public spaces is about competing worldviews, not neutrality
•05/07/12: Morality and economy are separate universes?
•04/30/12: How to keep the poor poor
•04/23/12: Obama's real 'stay-at-home mom' problem
•04/16/12: Obama makes foul call for economic 'fairness'
•04/09/12: GOP's black, Hispanic problem
•04/02/12: A wakeup call to a nation still sleeping through a crisis
•03/26/12: Supremes to confront new, energetic efforts to undermine the principles upon which this nation stands
•03/19/12: Republican race is just getting started
•03/12/12: Contraception flap 'defines deviancy down'
•03/05/12: Breitbart's final message to the Left
•02/27/12: Support for Santorum will grow despite attacks
•02/20/12: Libs' recent victories fuel Santorum surge
•02/06/12: Memo to Mitt: Whole nation is on government plantation
•01/30/12: Obama's vision puts America last
•01/23/12: Court ruling on ultrasound law worth celebrating
•01/16/12: Capitalism on trial
•01/09/12: NAACP plantation masters play race card again
•01/02/12: Youths' support for Ron Paul is misplaced
•12/26/11: In search of an ambiguous conservative leader
•12/19/11: Thank U.S. troops, notably wounded warriors
•12/12/11: Land of the envious and home of the victim
•12/05/11: Payroll tax cut is another welfare scam
•11/28/11: Pray every day that America does not lose its way
•11/21/11: We're ignoring the Constitution
•11/14/11: The central issue of our time will define the 2012 presidential election
•11/07/11: Separation of . . . morality and economy?
•10/31/11: Every American should listen to Paul Ryan
•10/24/11: Disrespect for life and disrespect for property go hand in hand
•10/17/11:The right argument for Cain
•10/10/11: Occupy Wall Street: More from the culture of narcissism
•10/03/11: Why so many blacks continue to fail
•09/26/11: So many GOP debates, so few candidate revelations
•09/19/11: The the last vestige of the triumph of hope over experience is throwing itself a party. They'll be passing out palms-up portions of pity, but few solutions
•09/12/11: I'll defend Perry on Social Security Ponzi scheme
•09/05/11: Marco Rubio's Courageous speech
•08/28/11: The Steve Jobs/Martin Luther King Jr. Connection
•08/19/11: Blacks' dilemma with Obama